A Review on Cryptographic Hashing Algorithms for Message Authentication

Abstract

The main purpose of Message Authentication is to prevent manipulation of the message which is sent. MAC stands for Message Authentication Code which is also known as "Integrity Check Value" or "Cryptographic Checksum". The basic objectives of a hash function are to: • Prevent finding a message from a given hash value (Inversion) • Prevent finding two messages with the same hash value (Collision) On the other hand, Message Authentication Codes are mainly to prevent forgery. Thus, using hash functions for Message Authentication may get a bit complex as hash functions do not have the in-built functionality of a key. In this paper, we discuss a few popular cryptographic hashing algorithms and compare their performance with respect to each other.